Finding Genius Podcast

AlphaNetworks is an IBM Watson powered blockchain entertainment platform that brings dynamic pricing to media, and tokenizes the user experience. It combines aspects of the over-the-top services like Netflix, online video aggregators like YouTube, and premium cable models like HBO to create more efficient recommendation and payments mechanisms and a new kind of user experience. Our goal is to create the "rails" for a new era of media distribution. alphanetworks.io

Geetanjali Bendale, Ph.D. candidate in bioengineering and member of the team at the Regenerative Neurobiology & Neuroelectronics Laboratory (RNN Laboratory)—UT Dallas, provides a thorough overview of the current advances in nerve regeneration and repair. Geetanjali Bendale received a master's in bioengineering from the University of Texas at Arlington. Her intensive research focuses on complex nerve regeneration mechanisms and the methods for restoring functional recovery via the use of bio-mimetic cues. Bendale is currently working toward her Ph.D. at the RNN Laboratory under the guidance of Mario Romero-Ortega, Ph.D. Dr. Romero is an associate professor of bioengineering at UT Dallas and adjunct faculty in the surgery department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, the UTA Research Institute, and he is a partner researcher at the University of Wollongong, Australia. The RNN Laboratory is interested in understanding the mechanisms involved in axon guidance and target recognition during development, as well as after an injury. The lab's focus is in the application of this knowledge within translational applications. Some of their specific work pertains to spinal cord injuries and neuroprotection, neuroma prevention, peripheral nerve gap repair, and regenerative peripheral neurointerfaces as applied to the overall command and feel of robotic prosthetic limbs. Bendale discusses her work at the RNN Laboratory, specifically detailing their study in nerve regeneration and the development of a biosynthetic nerve implant, which can be used to find new molecules and growth factors that aid in nerve regeneration. She details the body's intrinsic response to nerve damage and how many nerves in the limbs can regenerate naturally, but if an injury is severe, she states that the nerve may need some assistance such as a graft perhaps. And she describes the various nerve grafts that are currently FDA approved and being used in clinics today. Additionally, she outlines how the tube structures of these nerve repair conduits work and the time it takes for growth to be generated that leads to complete repair of the damaged nerve. As much research has shown, only a small window of time exists in order to repair nerves properly, in fact, as Bendale comments the time frame could be just a few hours, so after a nerve damage injury occurs timing can be critical. She explains how signals are sent between the proximal and distal ends of the nerve and why this communication is key to repair. The bioengineering specialist provides an overview of one of their upcoming studies that will center on new molecules that help with strengthening, sensory axons, and motor function axons. And she details how the signals and axons coordinate to accomplish the goal of repair, and precisely which molecules are best suited for aiding in recovery. Further, Bendale explains how their research found that due to the architecture of their biosynthetic nerve implant, the growth of select axons was continuous, which was a significant achievement in the area of nerve repair.

The EOS Alliance will assist all EOS community stakeholders to find their voice and be heard in the community, so the EOS mainnet can evolve to serve humanity's needs. Bancor Protocol™ is a standard for the creation of Smart Tokens™, cryptocurrencies with built-in convertibility directly through their smart contracts. Bancor utilizes an innovative token "Connector" method to enable formulaic price calculation and continuous liquidity for all compliant tokens, without needing to match two parties in an exchange. Smart Tokens™ interconnect to form token liquidity networks, allowing user-generated cryptocurrencies to thrive. For more information, please visit the website and read the Bancor Protocol™ Whitepaper.

Brett Bernstein, co-founder, and CEO at Gatsby (gatsby.ai) delivers an informative overview of the current state of consumer marketing and promotions. From healthy foods vending machines to healthcare, Bernstein's background and knowledge in business are as diverse as it is deep. He has spent his career launching products and businesses that cut to the heart of the consumer/brand experience. And Bernstein's interest in influencer marketing and promotions fueled his desire to launch Gatsby. Bernstein and his team are focused on bringing real solutions to online brands to help businesses engage in social media in a more authentic and interesting way, to assist them with the creation of promotions that are elegant and intriguing, that bring more traffic— and conversions. Bernstein recounts how he came to the realization that there was a hole in the market, especially regarding e-commerce. For as every brand is social, and nearly every buyer has a social media presence, Bernstein observed that businesses were wasting time and resources by not fully putting their efforts toward the activation of the brand's consumers and customers who are already engaged. By connecting businesses with real social customers and offering a powerful toolbox to custom-brand outgoing promotions that are subtle, but get results, Gatsby is reinventing the way we do business. Gatsby provides online innovation that can help leverage existing customers and interested parties to open up more opportunity. As Bernstein states, through their innovation and automation, Gatsby-backed promotions yield higher quality results. Bernstein acknowledges that Gatsby gathers information and works with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, but it is Instagram that they find most intriguing, as 80% of their registrations and interested parties are activating via Instagram. The days are gone in which consumers look to traditional advertising to influence their buyer behavior. As most consumers are now hooked into technology at a higher level, they are observing and monitoring brands in multiple ways through a wide swath of avenues, thus contemporary brands must be authentic, and businesses have to bring their A-game. Consumers want brands that are unique, have a story to tell, and they crave human connection. Thus they prefer brands that people are talking about, that their friends and social media influencers value. The branding and promotions expert provides an overview of the few easy steps that any business, big or small, can take to get plugged in immediately to the Gatsby platform and begin driving their sales and conversions to a higher level. And he gives a detailed description of the various tools and methods that users can choose to tailor their Gatsby performance and experience to their unique needs.

Powered by a team of veteran game-industry experts and blockchain specialists, Refereum helps developers and publishers reward players and influencers for playing the games they love. Cutting out the marketing middleman by directly rewarding influencers and gamers to promote and play video games. www.refereum.com

Ryan Fyfe, co-founder and CEO of WorkChain.io, expresses his thoughts on the changing digital world, blockchain and cryptocurrency. WorkChain.io is a groundbreaking cloud and blockchain rooted software company that seeks to embolden individuals, institutions, companies, and businesses by providing solutions that deliver secure work records that they can depend on. Specifically, WorkChain.io has a heavy focus on cryptocurrency and one of the areas they champion is in helping workers have more control over their money. By automating the steps from 'work completed' to 'paycheck delivered' their technology improves processing time and creates efficiency. Fyfe is a self-described entrepreneur, investor, and blockchain enthusiast who is passionate about changing the way the world works. He has over a decade of experience in web development and internet marketing with a keen interest in building cloud-based products for business. Fyfe was the founder and former CEO at Humanity.com as well as Shiftplanning.com, and his work has served the interests of more than half a million users across 87 countries. And he is a seasoned professional who has worked in all stages of web system development, e-marketing and application development. Fyfe discusses the archaic system of payroll processing that he feels needs a complete revolution. He recounts many of the excuses that people give for not immediately converting to a real-time payroll system, such as responsibility issues of employees, to the idea that businesses need more time to manage their invoicing, expenses, and accounting. Fyfe provides his insights into other crypto projects and the unified goal of decentralization as blockchain becomes more dominant in the marketplace. Fyfe's mission is to further the validation process such that workers can be approved for the work they have done right away, which will allow employers to advance funds immediately. From a socially-conscious perspective, Fyfe hopes his methods will eventually phase out predatory lending companies such as check cashing stores that take an enormous percentage of workers' paychecks. The blockchain expert discusses various forms of cryptocurrency, from bitcoin to stablecoin, and the ways they can be implemented into systems. He explains how stablecoin is perhaps more appealing to some due to its dollar-backed system and low volatility. Fyfe delves into the trending issue of crypto-responsibility, in other words, is the workforce responsible enough to manage their funds within a new delivery system. He highlights the pros and cons that various minds have put forth in the ongoing debate, but Fyfe's opinion is decidedly in favor of the workers' right to have their payments when work is done so they can save it, invest it, or spend it—whatever they want, for after all, they've earned it. Fyfe provides an overview of the general acceptance of these new methods of payment and delivery, and he outlines how businesses and governments of other countries and territories are embracing the system somewhat faster than those in the United States, which have demonstrated a level of reluctance. The cryptocurrency enthusiast breaks down the steps that WorkChain.io's solutions offer to employer and employee, and how smart contracts allow a sort of escrow type of relationship to flourish that delivers payment for services rendered, without delays. He muses about the many types of employer-employee contract work that can benefit from the system, from Uber drivers and other gig-based work, to shift work and beyond. As the technology is expanding and acceptance is growing, WorkChain.io is launching more preview products to continue opening the minds of skeptics, for as our digital world progresses, digital solutions to problems will become the norm.

Darryll DiPietro President and CEO at Coincierge Club join host Juliet Lemar on Future Tech Podcast. Coincierge offers three very unique products designed to interact with each other, yet provide value independently. Club – service backed cryptocurrency built on the Waves blockchain Wallet – mobile private key cryptocurrency wallet capable of holding over 18,000 different cryptocurrencies Pro – point of sale application built on Android designed to provide secure, chargeback proof transactions for free to the vendor.

Mat Piaggi, community manager at Lisk (lisk.io), delivers a detailed overview of his company's open-source project work in the ever-expanding blockchain space. In Piaggi's work with Lisk, he seeks to build strong connections and bridges between brands, consumers, and communities. He has a broad range of experience with emerging startups in Germany, New Zealand, and Australia, and as community manager, he strives to bring parties together to form a global community-based movement built upon Lisk's methods and tech advances. Piaggi's interest in cryptocurrency in regard to market trading increased his desire to learn how blockchain could benefit many types of industries. Piaggi earned his bachelors degree in communications from the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. The blockchain is a type of add-only transaction in regard to a collection of accounts. Specifically, this collection, or ledger, can only be written onto, or added onto, with new information, while previous information that is stored in blocks cannot be mutated, edited, or even adjusted. Blockchain utilizes cryptography to bring together contents of the new blocks with each currently existing block, such that a change to the contents of a block in the chain would nullify the data in all subsequent blocks. Piaggi's company, Lisk, is comprised of 50 plus people who are technology experts from all over the globe. Lisk seeks to create scalable, customizable solutions for applications businesses and industry leaders can utilize. Piaggi discusses how his goal is to lower the barrier of entry for the technology, making it more accessible to everyone, and to facilitate the user experience, making it easier to use for anyone irrespective of how tech-savvy they may be. Piaggi discusses how their platform is easy to use for developers who already have a basic understanding of JavaScript, which is the widest used coding language in the world. The blockchain expert provides an overview of Lisk's major technology products—Lisk Core, Lisk Elements, and Lisk Commander. As he explains, on the network side, List Core is essentially the "brain" of their products. Lisk Core is a tool for technical users who choose to access Lisk's primary network blockchain data, to secure network infrastructure or succeed in achieving delegate forging access. Lisk Elements is a collection of libraries that will allow developers to customize their own sidechain. And Lisk Commander allows developers to conduct their sidechain development and start up their projects. Additionally, Piaggi details the user-interface side of Lisk's development products such as Lisk Hub, which functions as a wallet and allows users to interact with a wider ecosystem. Piaggi explains that as Lisk is an open source project, there is greater transparency and trust, better community engagement, and higher security due to extensive testing. Piaggi discusses some of the future developments that will be on the horizon in the coming months and years, such as bringing Lisk Core over to the main net and lifting the entire sidechain development kit over the hump, adding features, as they move to and past their 1.0 iterations. And as the close of 2018 approaches, Lisk will be involved in many international conferences and community development meetings to expand their reach further.

Davis Sawyer, co-founder and chief product officer at Deeplite (deeplite.ai), delivers a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the many ways in which deep learning is enabling AI to bring faster, more efficient technology to our low-power devices. Sawyer's company, Deeplite, seeks to implement their patented technology to allow industries to maximize the productivity of deep learning systems and to enable AI for new opportunities on low-power devices. Deeplite's AI-driven optimizer accelerates deep neural network processing and makes it more energy-efficient. Their faster, leaner neural networks enable AI to be more accessible, easier to scale, and more economical as well. From translating speech to text automatically, to powerful photo classification and recognition, AI has enhanced our daily lives in an increasingly data-driven world. However, as Sawyer describes, there are still many fundamental challenges that must be addressed to fully integrate AI into our lives for maximum productivity. One challenge Sawyer discusses is how to put sophisticated computation on low-end devices such as smartphones, to bring the tech to the edge of computing. Deeplite's mission is to fully integrate the AI technology so smartphone users can get the most powerful tech and computational processing for whatever their business or industry endeavors may be. Sawyer states that you can make a world fit for AI or you can make AI fit into the world. And at Deeplite, Sawyer's team takes the approach that it is best to look under the hood so to speak, to look at the fundamental calculations to see if there can be improvements in order to do a better job of delivering solid results. Deeplite is working to optimize deep learning models to assist companies that are using these models in their business structure. Through reinforcement learning, Sawyer's product essentially provides a means to compress models automatically for a more cost-effective, faster path to usable AI solutions for business. Sawyer discusses the many areas in which Deeplite's technology can increase productivity and efficiency. Sawyer discusses robustness, privacy, and latency concerns in regard to advancing AI in business and daily life, and he details how autonomous vehicles are one industry area in which Deeplite is lending a hand. Deeplite's engine can produce optimized models that cut down AI computational time, which increases the efficiency significantly. With sometimes as many as six hundred million parameters and huge data sets, the problems, as Sawyer details, are sometimes scalability, and the need to create algorithms where understanding is not sacrificed, but is in fact enhanced. Sawyer discusses informational resiliency in deep neural networks. He explains the process of stressing a network, forcing it to meet constraints, etc., putting environmental pressure on intelligent systems, and seeing how they successfully adapt. It is this kind of discovery that pushes Sawyer and his team at Deeplite to dig deeper into the methods of utilization for deep learning systems, to enable them to continue developing better tech products to advance the many ways we use and benefit from technology.

Mahek A. Shah, MD, senior researcher and faculty member at Harvard Business School, discusses the shift in healthcare to a value-based system. Dr. Shah's background in investment banking, solving large-scale problems for clients, stimulated a passion to take a similar mindset and approach to healthcare improvements. Dr. Shah's mission is to bring more humanity to the healthcare system by creating higher value for patients, providers, payers, and people worldwide—bridging the business world with health care delivery. As a senior project leader and senior researcher at Harvard Business School, Dr. Shah oversees Harvard's Value Measurement for Health Care projects, which critically analyze time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) globally in order to fully grasp the true, actual costs of healthcare delivery. Additionally, Dr. Shah advises executives who manage large health systems and companies, educating and arming them with tools to measure their outcomes and overall costs. By working for improvements at the patient level, on the front lines of healthcare delivery, Dr. Shah hopes to make big strides in the advancement of healthcare systems. Shah's team works specifically with individual conditions, from chronic to acute, and by studying the way patients are managed they can offer advice and consultation for dramatic improvements. Their critical analysis of procedures and processes can provide key insight to healthcare managers, etc. helping them to understand how they can create value in their system. As Dr. Shah explains, true value exists at the patient level, and healthcare systems need to focus more intently on the needs of their customers—the patients. Dr. Shah details how the current model incentivizes based on 'fee for services' such that physicians are rewarded for selling services, but this model does not ensure that the patient's needs are truly serviced. The key is to get systems to move forward to a value-based healthcare platform, much like other industries have implemented with great success. While Dr. Shah believes that most people in healthcare have chosen that path in order to provide what is best for patients, the system of providing that care can be complex. Dr. Shah underscores that it's a very important time in healthcare as there are so many moving parts. As he explains, if value is defined as the outcome that matters to patients over the cost of delivering that outcome then an analysis of this will make it is possible to find ways to increase the value equation from a directional standpoint. Success, as Shah states, is measured by functional outcomes, and systems should be looking at what the true cost is to deliver those outcomes, at the patient level. He discusses the importance of regular follow-ups after procedures and during recovery, and how costs can increase when follow up is not part of the system's plan. Dr. Shah details three criteria he looks for in healthcare-based projects, to ensure that they are meaningful, actionable, and hopefully replicable to other areas of a system's organization. As healthcare systems improve it will be the analytics that can deliver valuable insights into their operations, and most importantly, at the point of care for the patient.